Revenge of the Assassin

with me,” Cruz nudged.

“Ah. Has it? It really only seems like yesterday…”

Cruz fumbled with his shirt pocket and extracted a small black velvet box, moving it over her shoulders and positioning it on the counter next to her plate.

“Wha…what’s this?” Dinah asked in a whisper, suddenly serious.

“Go ahead. Open it.”

Dinah reached forward with trembling hands and pried the small case open. Inside sat a platinum band with a solitary one carat diamond. Dinah drew in a sharp intake of breath, and lifting the box, turned to face Cruz, who still held her waist, smiling.

“Is this…?”

“I love you, Dinah. It’s time. I’d like you to marry me. I know I’m not perfect, and I have my faults, but…”

Dinah’s eyes welled with moisture as she silently removed the band from the box and slipped the little velvet square back into his shirt pocket. She slid the ring on her finger and smiled through the tears.

“It fits.”

“Yes. I measured one of your other rings. Actually traced the interior circumference and took it to the jeweler. He said you’re a six. Looks like he knew his stuff,” Cruz explained nervously.

She shushed him with a long kiss on the mouth. Tears of joy trickling down her flawless cheeks, she gazed into his eyes and smiled. “Capitan, I accept your offer.” She kissed him again.

They’d come a long way since Cruz had met her while investigating El Rey. He’d have never thought it possible when he’d first seen her, hair gleaming in the sun, radiantly beautiful in the shabby little pawn shop lobby where Cruz and his partner had been waiting. And yet a kind of small miracle had taken place, and she’d been attracted to him, and now, ten months after first setting eyes on her and six months since their first full night together at his place, the most beautiful woman in Mexico was going to be his wife.

Once Cruz had been transported to the office in the armored BMW 760 Li that was his official vehicle, the usual crush of reports and urgent requests buried him. One benefit of his line of work was that there was never any shortage of events — the cartels were always up to something — so it never threatened to be boring or uneventful. He probably coordinated at least one major raid per week on a cartel stronghold or suspected drug or arms storage location, and while his group’s success rate wasn’t stellar, it was better than anyone expected. In a hierarchy that was historically riddled with corruption, Cruz’s group was considered above reproach — one of the very few clean organizations in a nation where their adversary wielded enormous financial resources they couldn’t hope to match.

The entire budget for the Mexican army was a billion dollars a year, and the army worked alongside the Federales to battle drug trafficking. The budget for the entire Mexican Federal Police force was thirty-five billion, but that included all duties — only ten percent or so was spent on anti-cartel activities. The rest went to personnel and administration and general law enforcement, and in the way that large government bureaucracies were always inefficient, the Federales were no different than, say, the Pentagon, where hammers cost two hundred dollars.

The actual money that made it to the street level battle against the cartels was a laughable few billion. Contrasted against the estimated eighty to a hundred billion of wholesale value drugs moving through Mexico — cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, marijuana — the army and law enforcement was perennially outgunned and outspent. If the cartels spent twenty percent of their profits on battling law enforcement, the government’s efforts were dwarfed by a factor of six or seven.

The sad reality was that Mexico would never be able to spend sufficiently to curtail the cartels, certainly not as long as its huge neighbor to the north was the largest market for illegal drugs in the world. Everyone knew it — Cruz, the government, the cartels. But that didn’t mean that there couldn’t be successes along the way. Over the last few years, a sustained clampdown in Tijuana, one of the largest gateways for drug smuggling, had devastated the Arellano Felix cartel there, leaving a power vacuum. So wins could happen. Of course, the ultimate futility of the victories was simply that another cartel would step in and take over the territory — in this case, the Sinaloa cartel had radically increased its hold in Tijuana, and nothing much changed except who the money stuck to at the end of the day. Shipments continued unabated, supply in the U.S. was constant, and the cash flowed like champagne in a rap video.

It was easy to get demoralized, but Cruz considered his job as much like that of a doctor. Patients would come and go, and yes, everyone ultimately would die — nobody escaped that final outcome. But in the interim, if he could save some people, or extend their lives, then he counted it as a success. True, one could view the entire exercise as futile — after all, the patients always died eventually — but that perspective wasn’t useful. Everything if viewed in that light was pointless, and nobody would ever get out of bed and do anything if they thought about it too much.

No, better to stay focused on the small, sustainable victories and leave the big picture to its own devices.

Cruz hurried into his private office, trailed by his younger lieutenant, Briones, now fully recuperated from the shooting that had almost taken his life during the confrontation with El Rey at the G-20 financial summit. Cruz tossed his satchel on his desk, then plopped down behind it, eyeing Briones warily.

“What’s the damage today? What have we got going on?” Cruz asked.

“The tip we got yesterday about the construction supply bodega seems to be panning out. We’ve had it under surveillance all night, and there’s a surprising amount of traffic for a storage facility that supposedly closes at six,” Briones reported.

“Out towards Toluca, right?”

“Near the airport. Four different SUVs, all luxury, visited between nine p.m. and midnight. Then nothing more until this morning, when what looks like three night guards were relieved by a day shift of two. The strange thing is that they were all heavily armed. I wonder if that means anything?” Briones wondered aloud.

Cruz held back a smile. “Considering that gun possession is a felony in Mexico, you may be on to something. Seems like a lot of firepower to keep some kids from stealing a few bags of cement for beer money.”

“That was my thinking,” Briones said, smirking. They both knew that the bodega was likely a distribution point for the Sinaloa cartel. “Has it seemed to you that we’re getting an awful lot of luck thrown our way lately against the Sinaloans? I mean, I’m not complaining, but over the last few months, I’d guess that ninety percent of our leads have been Sinaloa deals. That’s almost the polar opposite of how last year went.”

Cruz nodded. “My guess is that the other cartels are trying to move against them, so they’re rolling over whenever possible. I’d say this is just a routine power play. Same as it ever was,” Cruz opined. “The continued war of attrition — survival of the fittest.”

“Maybe you’re right. I just thought the timing was odd. It’s like someone flicked a light switch, and it became open season on Sinaloa, whereas in the past they’ve been untouchable.”

“Does it really matter which scumbags we put away, in the end? There will always be more to take their place. For now, it’s Sinaloa. I say good. About time they started going down.” Cruz smiled at his secretary, who had entered with a cup of coffee for him. “What do you think, Raquel? Do you think it matters whether we arrest more Juarez, Sinaloa, Knights Templar, or Los Zetas cartel this month?”

She just shook her head before departing unobtrusively.

Cruz took a cautionary sip and then put the cup down to cool. “Let’s keep an eye on the bodega and have a tactical squad standing by for whenever a delivery gets made. It’s probably coming in as a shipment during business hours, and then the distribution takes place at night. Make a list of all the suppliers that show up, and let’s look for the oddity. I don’t want to take the place and wind up with my dick in my hand. If we’re going to move on it, let’s make sure there’s something there. Clear?” Cruz instructed.

“Yes, sir. I’m way ahead of you. We’ll maintain surveillance for a week, and then once we’ve established a pattern, especially on the night visitors, we’ll go in. We’ve got nothing but time. They have no idea we’re on to them.”

“Very good. What else do we have? Any progress on the Operation Fast and Furious weapons?” Cruz asked.

Fast and Furious was a notorious international scandal where the American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and